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From this discussion it becomes perfectly clear that the
individual member of the All contributes to that All in the
degree of its kind and condition; thus it acts and is acted upon.
In any particular animal each of the limbs and organs, in the
measure of its kind and purpose, aids the entire being by service
performed and counts in rank and utility: it gives what is in it
its gift and takes from its fellows in the degree of receptive
power belonging to its kind; there is something like a common
sensitiveness linking the parts, and in the orders in which each
of the parts is also animate, each will have, in addition to its
rank as part, the very particular functions of a living being.
We have learned, further, something of our human standing; we
know that we too accomplish within the All a work not confined to
the activity and receptivity of body in relation to body; we know
that we bring to it that higher nature of ours, linked as we are
by affinities within us towards the answering affinities outside
us; becoming by our soul and the conditions of our kind thus
linked- or, better, being linked by Nature- with our next highest
in the celestial or demonic realm, and thence onwards with those
above the Celestials, we cannot fail to manifest our quality.
Still, we are not all able to offer the same gifts or to accept
identically: if we do not possess good, we cannot bestow it; nor
can we ever purvey any good thing to one that has no power of
receiving good. Anyone that adds his evil to the total of things
is known for what he is and, in accordance with his kind, is
pressed down into the evil which he has made his own, and hence,
upon death, goes to whatever region fits his quality- and all
this happens under the pull of natural forces.
For the good man, the giving and the taking and the changes of
state go quite the other way; the particular tendencies of the
nature, we may put it, transpose the cords [so that we are moved
by that only which, in Plato's metaphor of the puppets, draws
towards the best].
Thus this universe of ours is a wonder of power and wisdom,
everything by a noiseless road coming to pass according to a law
which none may elude- which the base man never conceives though
it is leading him, all unknowingly, to that place in the All
where his lot must be cast- which the just man knows, and,
knowing, sets out to the place he must, understanding, even as he
begins the journey, where he is to be housed at the end, and
having the good hope that he will be with gods.
In a living being of small scope the parts vary but slightly, and
have but a faint individual consciousness, and, unless possibly
in a few and for a short time, are not themselves alive. But in a
living universe, of high expanse, where every entity has vast
scope and many of the members have life, there must be wider
movement and greater changes. We see the sun and the moon and the
other stars shifting place and course in an ordered progression.
It is therefore within reason that the souls, also, of the All
should have their changes, not retaining unbrokenly the same
quality, but ranged in some analogy with their action and
experience- some taking rank as head and some as foot in a
disposition consonant with the Universal Being which has its
degrees in better and less good. A soul, which neither chooses
the highest that is here, nor has lent itself to the lowest, is
one which has abandoned another, a purer, place, taking this
sphere in free election.
The punishments of wrong-doing are like the treatment of diseased
parts of the body- here, medicines to knit sundered flesh; there,
amputations; elsewhere, change of environment and condition- and
the penalties are planned to bring health to the All by settling
every member in the fitting place: and this health of the All
requires that one man be made over anew and another, sick here,
be taken hence to where he shall be weakly no longer.
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